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Facts, At Any Rate, Could Not Be Kept Hidden. They Could Be Tracked Down By Inquiry, They Could Be Squeezed Out Of You By Torture. But If The Object Was Not To Stay Alive But To Stay Human, What Difference Did It Ultimately Make? They Could Not Alter Your Feelings, For That Matter You Could Not Alter Them Yourself, Even If You Wanted To. They Could Lay Bare In The Utmost Detail Everything That You Had Done Or Said Or Thought; But The Inner Heart, Whose Workings Were Mysterious Even To Yourself, Remained Impregnable.

-George Orwell

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Facts, At Any Rate,

George Orwell

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Facts, At Any Rate, Could Not Be Kept Hidden. They Could Be Tracked Down By Inquiry, They Could Be Squeezed Out Of You By Torture. But If The Object Was Not To Stay Alive But To Stay Human, What Difference Did It Ultimately Make? They Could Not Alter Your Feelings, For That Matter You Could Not Alter Them Yourself, Even If You Wanted To. They Could Lay Bare In The Utmost Detail Everything That You Had Done Or Said Or Thought; But The Inner Heart, Whose Workings Were Mysterious Even To Yourself, Remained Impregnable.

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I Am Well Acquainted With All The Arguments Against Freedom Of Thought And Speech - The Arguments Which Claim That It Cannot Exist, And The Arguments Which Claim That It Ought Not To. I Answer Simply That They Don't Convince Me And That Our Civilization Over A Period Of Four Hundred Years Has Been Founded On The Opposite Notice.

Confession Is Not Betrayal. What You Say Or Do Doesn't Matter; Only Feelings Matter. If They Could Make Me Stop Loving You-that Would Be The Real Betrayal.

All Left-wing Parties In The Highly Industrialized Countries Are At Bottom A Sham, Because They Make It Their Business To Fight Against Something Which They Do Not Really Wish To Destroy. They Have Internationalist Aims, And At The Same Time They Struggle To Keep Up A Standard Of Life With Which Those Aims Are Incompatible. We All Live By Robbing Asiatic Coolies, And Those Of Us Who Are 'enlightened' All Maintain That Those Coolies Ought To Be Set Free; But Our Standard Of Living, And Hence Our 'enlightenment,' Demands That The Robbery Shall Continue.

Never Use A Foreign Phrase, A Scientific Word, Or A Jargon Word If You Can Think Of An Everyday English Equivalent.

Never Again Will You Be Capable Of Ordinary Human Feeling. Everything Will Be Dead Inside You. Never Again Will You Be Capable Of Love, Or Friendship, Or Joy Of Living, Or Laughter, Or Curiosity, Or Courage, Or Integrity. You Will Be Hollow. We Shall Squeeze You Empty And Then We Shall Fill You With Ourselves.

After 40, A Man Is Responsible For His Face.

Perhaps A Man Really Dies When His Brain Stops, When He Loses The Power To Take In A New Idea.

The Two Aims Of The Party Are To Conquer The Whole Surface Of The Earth And To Extinguish Once And For All The Possibility Of Independent Thought. There Are Therefore Two Great Problems Which The Party Is Concerned To Solve. One Is How To Discover, Against His Will, What Another Human Being Is Thinking, And The Other Is How To Kill Several Hundred Million People In A Few Seconds Without Giving Warning Beforehand.

We Are The Dead. Our Only True Life Is In The Future.

I Had The Lonely Child's Habit Of Making Up Stories And Holding Conversations With Imaginary Persons, And I Think From The Very Start My Literary Ambitions Were Mixed Up With The Feeling Of Being Isolated And Undervalued. I Knew That I Had A Facility With Words And A Power Of Facing Unpleasant Facts, And I Felt That This Created A Sort Of Private World In Which I Could Get My Own Back For My Failure In Everyday Life.

In A Society In Which There Is No Law, And In Theory No Compulsion, The Only Arbiter Of Behaviour Is Public Opinion. But Public Opinion, Because Of The Tremendous Urge To Conformity In Gregarious Animals, Is Less Tolerant Than Any System Of Law. When Human Beings Are Governed By "thou Shalt Not", The Individual Can Practise A Certain Amount Of Eccentricity: When They Are Supposedly Governed By "love" Or "reason", He Is Under Continuous Pressure To Make Him Behave And Think In Exactly The Same Way As Everyone Else.

What Happens To You Here Is Forever.

The Main Motive For Nonattachment Is A Desire To Escape From The Pain Of Living, And Above All From Love, Which, Sexual Or Non-sexual, Is Hard Work.

By 'nationalism' I Mean First Of All The Habit Of Assuming That Human Beings Can Be Classified Like Insects And That Whole Blocks Of Millions And Tens Of Millions Of People Can Be Confidently Labeled 'good' Or 'bad'...by 'patriotism' I Mean Devotion To A Particular Place And A Particular Way Of Life, Which One Believes To Be Best In The World But Has No Wish To Force On Other People. Patriotism Is Of Its Nature Defensive, Both Militarily And Culturally. Nationalism, On The Other Hand, Is Inseparable From The Desire For Power.

During Part Of 1941 And 1942, When The Luftwaffe Was Busy In Russia, The German Radio Regaled Its Home Audience With Stories Of Devastating Air Raids On London. Now, We Are Aware That Those Raids Did Not Happen. But What Use Would Our Knowledge Be If The Germans Conquered Britain? For The Purpose Of A Future Historian, Did Those Raids Happen, Or Didn't They? The Answer Is: If Hitler Survives, They Happened, And If He Falls They Didn't Happen.

Being In A Minority, Even In A Minority Of One, Did Not Make You Mad. There Was Truth And There Was Untruth, And If You Clung To The Truth Even Against The Whole World, You Were Not Mad.

Cricket Is A Game Full Or Forlorn Hopes And Sudden Dramatic Changes Of Fortune And Its Rules Are So Ill-defined That Their Interpretation Is Partly An Ethical Business.

By Revolution We Become More Ourselves, Not Less.

All The War-propaganda, All The Screaming And Lies And Hatred, Comes Invariably From People Who Are Not Fighting.

The Capitalists Owned Everything In The World, And Everyone Else Was Their Slave. They Owned All The Land, All The Houses, All The Factories, And All The Money. If Anyone Disobeyed Them They Could Throw Him Into Prison, Or They Could Take His Job Away And Starve Him To Death. When Any Ordinary Person Spoke To A Capitalist He Had To Cringe And Bow To Him, And Take Off His Cap And Address Him As 'sir'

There Was Of Course No Way Of Knowing Whether You Were Being Watched At Any Given Moment. How Often, Or On What System, The Thought Police Plugged In On Any Individual Wire Was Guesswork. It Was Even Conceivable That They Watched Everybody All The Time. But At Any Rate They Could Plug In Your Wire Whenever They Wanted To. You Had To Live-did Live, From Habit That Became Instinct-in The Assumption That Every Sound You Made Was Overheard, And, Except In Darkness, Every Movement Scrutinized.

To Accept Civilization As It Is Practically Means Accepting Decay.

The Choice Before Human Beings, Is Not, As A Rule , Between Good And Evil But Between Two Evils. You Can Let The Nazis Rule The World : That Is Evil; Or You Can Overthrow Them By War , Which Is Also Evil. There Is No Other Choice Before You, And Whichever You Choose You Will Not Come Out With Clean Hands.

Lastly, Tea--unless One Is Drinking It In The Russian Style--should Be Drunk Without Sugar. I Know Very Well That I Am In A Minority Here. But Still, How Can You Call Yourself A True Tea-lover If You Destroy The Flavour Of Your Tea By Putting Sugar In It? It Would Be Equally Reasonable To Put In Pepper Or Salt. Tea Is Meant To Be Bitter, Just As Beer Is Meant To Be Bitter. If You Sweeten It, You Are No Longer Tasting The Tea, You Are Merely Tasting The Sugar; You Could Make A Very Similar Drink By Dissolving Sugar In Plain Hot Water.

All Propaganda Is Lies, Even When One Is Telling The Truth.

Telling The Truth

We Are All Capable Of Believing Things Which We Know To Be Untrue, And Then, When We Are Finally Proved Wrong, Impudently Twisting The Facts So As To Show That We Were Right.

There Are Some Situations From Which One Can Only Escape By Acting Like A Devil Or A Lunatic.

The Intellectual Is Different From The Ordinary Man, But Only In Certain Sections Of His Personality, And Even Then Not All The Time.

You're Only A Rebel From The Waist Downwards,' He Told Her.

Those Who 'abjure' Violence Can Do So Only Because Others Are Committing Violence On Their Behalf.

In Our Time, Political Speech And Writing Are Largely The Defense Of The Indefensible... Thus, Political Language Has To Consist Largely Of Euphemism, Question-begging, And Sheer Cloudy Vagueness... Political Language [is] Designed To Make Lies Sound Truthful And Murder Respectable.

Political Language

The Prime Necessities For Success In Life Are Money, Athleticism, Tailor Made Clothes And A Charming Smile.

Early In Life I Had Noticed That No Event Is Ever Correctly Reported In A Newspaper.

Almost As Swiftly As He Had Imagined It, She Had Torn Her Clothes Off, And When She Flung Them Aside It Was With That Same Magnificent Gesture By Which A Whole Civilization Seemed To Be Annihilated.

If There Is Hope, It Lies In The Proles.

Whoever Controls The Image And Information Of The Past Determines What And How Future Generations Will Think; Whoever Controls The Information And Images Of The Present Determines How Those Same People Will View The Past." "he Who Controls The Past Commands The Future. He Who Commands The Future Conquers The Past.

If You Want To Keep A Secret, You Must Also Hide It From Yourself. You Must Know All The While That It Is There, But Until It Is Needed You Must Never Let It Emerge Into Your Consciousness In Any Shape That Can Be Given A Name.

In Any Form Of Art Designed To Appeal To Large Numbers Of People,...[t]he Rich Man Is Usually 'bad', And His Machinations Are Invariably Frustrated.:; 'good Poor Man Defeats Bad Rich Man' Is An Accepted Formula.

Beauty Is Meaningless Until It Is Shared.

No Man Should Be Allowed To Be The President Who Does Not Understand Hogs, Or Hasn't Been Around A Manure Pile.

Progress And Reaction Have Both Turned Out To Be Swindles. Seemingly, There Is Nothing Left But Quietism - Robbing Reality Of Its Terrors By Simply Submitting To It.

If You Want To Keep A Secret, You Must Also Hide It From Yourself.

Keeping Secrets

The Ministry Of Peace Concerns Itself With War, The Ministry Of Truth With Lies, The Ministry Of Love With Torture And The Ministry Of Plenty With Starvation. These Contradictions Are Not Accidental , Nor Do They Result From From Ordinary Hypocrisy: They Are Deliberate Exercises In Doublethink

Bad Writers Are Nearly Always Haunted By The Notion That Latin Or Greek Words Are Grander Than Saxon Ones.

He Was Alone. The Past Was Dead, The Future Was Unimaginable.

Stupidity Was As Necessary As Intelligence, And As Difficult To Attain.

It Is A Mysterious Thing, The Loss Of Faith-as Mysterious As Faith Itself. Like Faith, It Is Ultimately Not Rooted In Logic; It Is A Change In The Climate Of The Mind.

Mysterious Things

The Masses Never Revolt Of Their Own Accord, And They Never Revolt Merely Because They Are Oppressed. Indeed, So Long As They Are Not Permitted To Have Standards Of Comparison, They Never Even Become Aware That They Are Oppressed.

If It Is Possible To Cut A Word Out, Always Cut It Out

Figures Of Speech

The Real Division Is Not Between Conservatives And Revolutionaries But Between Authoritarians And Libertarians.

His Answer To Every Problem, Every Setback Was “i Will Work Harder!” —which He Had Adopted As His Personal Motto.

We Have Sunk So Low It Has Become The Obligation Of Every Decent, Thinking Individual To Re-state The Obvious!

The Moralist And The Revolutionary Are Constantly Undermining One Another. Marx Exploded A Hundred Tons Of Dynamite Beneath The Moralist Position, And We Are Still Living In The Echo Of That Tremendous Crash. But Already, Somewhere Or Other, The Sappers Are At Work And Fresh Dynamite Is Being Tamped In Place To Blow Marx At The Moon. Then Marx, Or Somebody Like Him, Will Come Back With Yet More Dynamite, And So The Process Continues, To An End We Cannot Foresee.

Most Revolutionaries Are Potential Tories, Because They Imagine That Everything Can Be Put Right By Altering The Shape Of Society; Once That Change Is Effected, As It Sometimes Is, They See No Need For Any Other.

For A Second, Two Seconds, They Had Exchanged An Equivocal Glance, And That Was The End Of The Story. But Even That Was A Memorable Event, In The Locked Loneliness In Which One Had To Live.

Recently I Was Reading Somewhere Or Other An Italian Curio-dealer Who Attempted To Sell A 17th Century Crucifix To J.p. Morgan. Inside It Was Concealed A Stiletto. What A Perfect Symbol Of The Christian Religion.

Every Life Viewed From The Inside Is A Series Of Defeats.

The Essence Of Being Human Is That One Does Not Seek Perfection.

The Point Is That We Are All Capable Of Believing Things Which We Know To Be Untrue, And Then, When We Are Finally Proved Wrong, Impudently Twisting The Facts So As To Show That We Were Right. Intellectually, It Is Possible To Carry On This Process For An Indefinite Time: The Only Check On It Is That Sooner Or Later A False Belief Bumps Up Against Solid Reality, Usually On A Battlefield.

At Any Given Moment, There Is A Sort Of All Pervading Orthodoxy, A General Tacit Agreement Not To Discuss Large And Uncomfortable Facts.

The Totalitarian States Can Do Great Things, But There Is One Thing They Cannot Do: They Cannot Give The Factory-worker A Rifle And Tell Him To Take It Home And Keep It In His Bedroom. That Rifle, Hanging On The Wall Of The Working-class Flat Or Laborer's Cottage, Is The Symbol Of Democracy. It Is Our Job To See That It Stays There.

Today There Were Fear, Hatred, And Pain, But No Dignity Of Emotion, No Deep Or Complex Sorrows.

The Upper Class Desire To Remain So, The Middle Class Wish To Overthrow The Upper Class, And The Lower Class Want A Classless System.

Most People Get A Fair Amount Of Fun Out Of Their Lives, But On Balance Life Is Suffering, And Only The Very Young Or The Very Foolish Imagine Otherwise.

World Suffering

In My Opinion, Nothing Has Contributed So Much To The Corruption Of The Original Idea Of Socialism As The Belief That Russia Is A Socialist Country And That Every Act Of Its Rulers Must Be Excused, If Not Imitated. And So For The Last Ten Years, I Have Been Convinced That The Destruction Of The Soviet Myth Was Essential If We Wanted A Revival Of The Socialist Movement.

Socialist Countries

When The White Man Turns Tyrant It Is His Own Freedom That He Destroys.he Becomes A Sort Of Hollow,posing Dummy,the Conventional Figure Of A Sahib.for It Is The Condition Of His Rule That He Shall Spend His Life In Trying To Impress The "natives",and So In Every Crisis He Has Got To Do What The "natives" Expect Of Him.he Wears A Mask And His Face Grows To Fit It.

The Whole Idea Of Revenge And Punishment Is A Childish Day-dream. Properly Speaking, There Is No Such Thing As Revenge. Revenge Is An Act Which You Want To Commit When You Are Powerless And Because You Are Powerless: As Soon As The Sense Of Impotence Is Removed, The Desire Evaporates Also.

The Pleasures Of Spring Are Available To Everybody And Cost Nothing.

A Scrupulous Writer, In Every Sentence That He Writes, Will Ask Himself At Least Four Questions, Thus: 1. What Am I Trying To Say? 2. What Words Will Express It? 3. What Image Or Idiom Will Make It Clearer? 4. Is This Image Fresh Enough To Have An Effect?

Political Language

The Essence Of Oligarchical Rule Is Not Father-to-son Inheritance, But The Persistence Of A Certain World-view And A Certain Way Of Life, Imposed By The Dead Upon The Living. A Ruling Group Is A Ruling Group So Long As It Can Nominate Its Successors. The Party Is Not Concerned With Perpetuating Its Blood But With Perpetuating Itself. Who Wields Power Is Not Important, Provided That The Hierarchical Structure Remains Always The Same.

The Smell Of Her Hair, The Taste Of Her Mouth, The Feeling Of Her Skin Seemed To Have Got Inside Him, Or Into The Air All Round Him. She Had Become A Physical Necessity.

Several Of Them Would Have Protested If They Could Have Found The Right Arguments.

But The Proles, If Only They Could Somehow Become Conscious Of Their Own Strength, Would Have No Need To Conspire. They Needed Only To Rise Up And Shake Themselves Like A Horse Shaking Off Flies. If They Chose They Could Blow The Party To Pieces Tomorrow Morning. Surely Sooner Or Later It Must Occur To Them To Do It? And Yet --!

[...] You Can Get Anything In This World If You Genuinely Don't Want It.

If One Looks Closely One Sees That There Is No Essential Difference Between A Beggar's Livelihood And That Of Numberless Respectable People. Beggars Do Not Work, It Is Said; But Then, What Is Work? A Navvy Works By Swinging A Pick. An Accountant Works By Adding Up Figures. A Beggar Works By Standing Out Of Doors In All Weathers And Getting Varicose Veins, Chronic Bronchitis, Etc. It Is A Trade Like Any Other; Quite Useless, Of Course - But Then, Many Reputable Trades Are Quite Useless.

If You Set Yourself To It, You Can Live The Same Life, Rich Or Poor. You Can Keep On With Your Books And Your Ideas. You Just Got To Say To Yourself, "i'm A Free Man In Here" - He Tapped His Forehead - "and You're All Right.

In This Game That We're Playing, We Can't Win. Some Kinds Of Failure Are Better Than Other Kinds, That's All.

All Tyrannies Rule Through Fraud And Force, But Once The Fraud Is Exposed They Must Rely Exclusively On Force.

All Political Thinking For Years Past Has Been Vitiated In The Same Way. People Can Foresee The Future Only When It Coincides With Their Own Wishes, And The Most Grossly Obvious Facts Can Be Ignored When They Are Unwelcome.

Prolonged, Indiscriminate Reviewing Of Books Is A Quite Exceptionally Thankless, Irritating And Exhausting Job. It Not Only Involves Praising Trash But Constantly Inventing Reactions Towards Books About Which One Has No Spontaneous Feeling Whatever.

Every Line Of Serious Work That I Have Written Since 1936 Has Been Written, Directly Or Indirectly Against Totalitarianism And For Democratic Socialism As I Understand It.

Democratic Socialism

You Believe That Reality Is Something Objective, External, Existing In Its Own Right. You Also Believe That The Nature Of Reality Is Self-evident. When You Delude Yourself Into Thinking That You See Something, You Assume That Everyone Else Sees The Same Thing As You. But I Tell You, Winston, That Reality Exists In The Human Mind, And Nowhere Else. Not In The Individual Mind, Which Can Make Mistakes, And In Any Case Soon Perishes: Only In The Mind Of The Paty, Which Is Collective And Immortal.

Only Old Benjamin Professed To Remember Every Detail Of His Long Life And To Know That Things Never Had Been, Nor Ever Could Be Much Better Or Much Worse--hunger, Hardship, And Disappointment Being, So He Said, The Unalterable Law Of Life.

The Object Of Power Is Power.

The Truth, It Is Felt, Becomes Untruth When Your Enemy Utters It.

Nearly All Creators Of Utopia Have Resembled The Man Who Has Toothache, And Therefore Thinks Happiness Consists In Not Having Toothache. They Wanted To Produce A Perfect Society By An Endless Continuation Of Something That Had Only Been Valuable Because It Was Temporary. The Wider Course Would Be To Say That There Are Certain Lines Along Which Humanity Must Move, The Grand Strategy Is Mapped Out, But Detailed Prophecy Is Not Our Business. Whoever Tries To Imagine Perfection Simply Reveals His Own Emptiness.

The More Men You've Had, The More I Love You.

I Felt As If I Was The Only Person Awake In A City Of Sleepwalkers. That's An Illusion, Of Course. When You Walk Through A Crowd Of Strangers It's Next Door To Impossible Not To Imagine That They're All Waxworks, But Probably They're Thinking Just The Same About You.

Every War, When It Comes, Or Before It Comes, Is Represented Not As A War But As An Act Of Self-defense Against A Homicidal Maniac.

Man Is The Only Real Enemy We Have. Remove Man From The Scene, And The Root Cause Of Hunger And Overwork Is Abolished Forever.

Man Is The Only Creature That Consumes Without Producing

War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength.

The Food Crank Is By Definition A Person Willing To Cut Himself Off From Human Society In The Hopes Of Adding Five Years Onto The Life Of His Carcase; That Is, A Person Out Of Touch With Common Humanity.

Common Humanity

You Asked Me Once,' Said O'brien, 'what Was In Room 101. I Told You That You Knew The Answer Already. Everyone Knows It. The Thing That Is In Room 101 Is The Worst Thing In The World.

Facts, At Any Rate, Could Not Be Kept Hidden. They Could Be Tracked Down By Inquiry, They Could Be Squeezed Out Of You By Torture. But If The Object Was Not To Stay Alive But To Stay Human, What Difference Did It Ultimately Make? They Could Not Alter Your Feelings, For That Matter You Could Not Alter Them Yourself, Even If You Wanted To. They Could Lay Bare In The Utmost Detail Everything That You Had Done Or Said Or Thought; But The Inner Heart, Whose Workings Were Mysterious Even To Yourself, Remained Impregnable.

Freedom Of The Press, If It Means Anything At All, Means The Freedom To Criticize And Oppose

Freedom Of The Press

I Did Try Very Hard To Tell The Whole Truth Without Violating My Literary Instincts.

Everyone Believes In The Atrocities Of The Enemy And Disbelieves In Those Of His Own Side, Without Ever Bothering To Examine The Evidence.

The Further A Society Drifts From Truth The More It Will Hate Those Who Speak It.

By ' Patriotism ' I Mean Devotion To A Particular Place And A Particular Way Of Life , Which One Believes To Be The Best In The World But Has No Wish To Force On Other People.

The Plant Is Blind But It Knows Enough To Keep Pushing Upwards Towards The Light, And It Will Continue To Do This In The Face Of Endless Discouragements.

The Most Effective Way To Destroy People Is To Deny And Obliterate Their Own Understanding Of Their History.

In All The Useful Arts The World Is Either Standing Still Or Going Backwards.

If Thought Corrupts Language, Language Can Also Corrupt Thought. A Bad Usage Can Spread By Tradition And Imitation Even Among People Who Should And Do Know Better.

Between Pigs And Human Beings There Was Not And There Need Not Be Any Clash Of Interest Whatsoever.

Do You Begin To See, Then, What Kind Of World We Are Creating? It Is The Exact Opposite Of The Stupid Hedonistic Utopias That The Old Reformers Imagined. A World Of Fear And Treachery And Torment, A World Of Trampling And Being Trampled Upon, A World Which Will Grow Not Less But More Merciless As It Refines Itself. Progress In Our World Will Be Progress Toward More Pain.

He Was An Embittered Atheist, The Sort Of Atheist Who Does Not So Much Disbelieve In God As Personally Dislike Him.

There Is A Geographical Element In All Belief-saying What Seem Profound Truths In India Have A Way Of Seeming Enormous Platitudes In England, And Vice Versa . Perhaps The Fundamental Difference Is That Beneath A Tropical Sun Individuality Seems Less Distinct And The Loss Of It Less Important.

I Do Not Think One Can Assess A Writer's Motives Without Knowing Something Of His Early Development. His Subject Matter Will Be Determined By The Age He Lives In ... But Before He Ever Begins To Write He Will Have Acquired An Emotional Attitude From Which He Will Never Completely Escape.

When I See A Policeman With A Club Beating A Man On The Ground, I Don't Have To Ask Whose Side I'm On.

He Thought With A Kind Of Astonishment Of The Biological Uselessness Of Pain And Fear, The Treachery Of The Human Body Which Always Freezes Into Inertia At Exactly The Moment When A Special Effort Is Needed.

It Is Not Possible For Any Thinking Person To Live In Such A Society As Our Own Without Wanting To Change It.

Thinking Person

Doublethink Means The Power Of Holding Two Contradictory Beliefs In One's Mind Simultaneously, And Accepting Both Of Them.

In Moments Of Crisis One Is Never Fighting Against An External Enemy But Always Against One's Own Body.

We Shall Meet In The Place Where There Is No Darkness.

It Is A Mysterious Thing, The Loss Of Faith—as Mysterious As Faith Itself.

Mysterious Things

Circus Dogs Jump When The Trainer Cracks His Whip.

Can You Not Understand That Liberty Is Worth More Than Ribbons?

The Past Is A Curious Thing. It's With You All The Time. I Suppose An Hour Never Passes Without Your Thinking Of Things That Happened Ten Or Twenty Years Ago, And Yet Most Of The Time It's Got No Reality, It's Just A Set Of Facts That You've Learned, Like A Lot Of Stuff In A History Book. Then Some Chance Sight Or Sound Or Smell, Especially Smell, Sets You Going, And The Past Doesn't Merely Come Back To You, You're Actually In The Past. It Was Like That At This Moment.

So Long As They (the Proles) Continued To Work And Breed, Their Other Activities Were Without Importance. Left To Themselves, Like Cattle Turned Loose Upon The Plains Of Argentina, They Had Reverted To A Style Of Life That Appeared To Be Natural To Them, A Sort Of Ancestral Pattern...heavy Physical Work, The Care Of Home And Children, Petty Quarrels With Neighbors, Films, Football, Beer And Above All, Gambling Filled Up The Horizon Of Their Minds. To Keep Them In Control Was Not Difficult.

The Essential Act Of War Is Destruction, Not Necessarily Of Human Lives, But Of The Products Of Human Labor.

When It Comes To The Pinch, Human Beings Are Heroic. Women Face Childbed And The Scrubbing Brush, Revolutionaries Keep Their Mouths Shut In The Torture Chamber, Battleships Go Down With Their Guns Still Firing When Their Decks Are Awash.

What Can The England Of 1940 Have In Common With The England Of 1840? But Then, What Have You In Common With The Child Of Five Whose Photograph Your Mother Keeps On The Mantelpiece? Nothing, Except That You Happen To Be The Same Person.

A Thing Which I Regret, And Which I Will Try To Remedy Some Time, Is That I Have Never In My Life Planted A Walnut. Nobody Does Plant Them Nowadays-when You See A Walnut It Is Almost Invariably An Old Tree. If You Plant A Walnut You Are Planting It For Your Grandchildren, And Who Cares A Damn For His Grandchildren?

The War Is Not Meant To Be Won, It Is Meant To Be Continuous.

Happiness Can Exist Only In Acceptance.

High Sentiments Always Win In The End. The Leaders Who Offer Blood, Toil, Tears And Sweat Always Get More Out Of Their Followers Than Those Who Offer Safety And A Good Time. When It Comes To The Pinch, Human Beings Are Heroic.

In Our Time Political Speech And Writing Are Largely The Defense Of The Indefensible.

Political Language

All Art Is Propaganda; On The Other Hand, Not All Propaganda Is Art.

They Say That Time Heals All Things, They Say You Can Always Forget; But The Smiles And The Tears Across The Years They Twist My Heart Strings Yet!

A Hideous Ecstasy Of Fear And Vindictiveness, A Desire To Kill, To Torture, To Smash Faces In With A Sledge Hammer, Seemed To Flow Through The Whole Group Of People Like An Electric Current, Turning One Even Against One's Will Into A Grimacing, Screaming Lunatic. And Yet The Rage That One Felt Was An Abstract, Undirected Emotion Which Could Be Switched From One Object To Another Like The Flame Of A Blowlamp.

If You Have No Money, Men Won't Care For You, Women Won't Love You; Won't, That Is, Care For You Or Love You The Last Little Bit That Matters.

People Invent New Machines And Improve Existing Ones Almost Unconsciously, Rather As A Somnambulist Will Go Walking In His Sleep. The Interesting Puzzle In Our Times Is That We So Willingly Sleepwalk Through The Process Of Reconstituting The Conditions Of Human Existence.

What Was Happening Was Only The Working-out Of A Process That Had Started Years Ago. The First Step Had Been A Secret, Involuntary Thought, The Second Had Been The Opening Of The Diary. He Had Moved From Thoughts To Words, And Now From Words To Actions. The Last Step Was Something That Would Happen In The Ministry Of Love. He Had Accepted It. The End Was Contained In The Beginning.

The Energy That Actually Shapes The World Springs From Emotions - Racial Pride, Leader-worship, Religious Belief, Love Of War - Which Liberal Intellectuals Mechanically Write Off As Anachronisms, And Which They Have Usually Destroyed So Completely In Themselves As To Have Lost All Power Of Action.

Serious Sport Has Nothing To Do With Fair Play. It Is Bound Up With Hatred, Jealousy, Boastfulness, Disregard Of All Rules And Sadistic Pleasure In Witnessing Violence. In Other Words, It Is War Minus The Shooting.

We Know That No One Ever Seizes Power With The Intention Of Relinquishing It.

The Cat Joined The Re-education Committee And Was Very Active In It For Some Days. She Was Seen One Dag Sitting On A Roof And Talking To Some Sparrows Who Were Just Out Of Her Reach. She Was Telling Them That All Animals Were Now Comrades And That Any Sparrow Who Chose Could Come And Perch On Her Paw; But The Sparrows Kept Their Distance.

Man Serves The Interests Of No Creature Except Himself.

The Opinion That Art Should Have Nothing To Do With Politics Is Itself A Political Attitude.

The Urge To Shout Filthy Words At The Top Of His Voice Was As Strong As Ever.

A Plongeur Is A Slave, And A Wasted Slave, Doing Stupid And Largely Unnecessary Work. He Is Kept At Work, Ultimately, Because Of A Vague Feeling That He Would Be Dangerous If He Had Leisure. And Educated People, Who Should Be On His Side, Acquiesce In The Process, Because They Know Nothing About Him And Consequently Are Afraid Of Him.

A Peace That Was Truly Permanent Would Be The Same As A Permanent War.

If You Can Feel That Staying Human Is Worth While, Even When It Can't Have Any Practical Result Whatsoever, You've Beaten Them.

For The Future. For The Unborn.

The Life Of An Animal Is Misery And Slavery: That Is The Plain Truth.

Using Clichés Is A Substitute For Thinking

I Watched Him [a 'fat Russian Agent'] With Some Interest, For It Was The First Time That I Had Seen A Person Whose Profession Was Telling Lies -- Unless One Counts Journalists.

All Animals Are Equal, But Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others.

He [gandhi] Was Not One Of Those Saints Who Are Marked Out By Their Phenomenal Piety From Childhood Onwards, Nor One Of The Other Kind Who Forsake The World After Sensational Debaucheries.

In Real Life It Is Always The Anvil That Breaks The Hammer.

Certainly All "progressive" Thought, Has Assumed Tacitly That Human Beings Desire Nothing Beyond Ease, Security, And Avoidance Of Pain... Hitler, Because In His Joyless Mind He Feels It With Exceptional Strength, Knows That Human Beings Don't Only Want Comfort, Safety, Short Working-hours, Hygiene, Birth-control And, In General, Common Sense; They Also, At Least Intermittently, Want Struggle And Self-sacrifice, Not To Mention Drums, Flags And Loyalty-parades. However They May Be As Economic Theories, Fascism And Nazism Are Psychologically Far Sounder Than Any Hedonistic Conception Of Life.

All Rulers In All Ages Have Tried To Impose A False View Of The World Upon Their Followers.

The Essence Of Being Human Is That One Does Not Seek Perfection, That One Is Sometimes Willing To Commit Sins For The Sake Of Loyalty, That One Does Not Push Asceticism To The Point Where It Makes Friendly Intercourse Impossible, And That One Is Prepared In The End To Be Defeated And Broken Up By Life, Which Is The Inevitable Price Of Fastening One's Love Upon Other Human Individuals.

The Primary Aim Of Modern Warfare ... Is To Use Up The Products Of The Machine Without Raising The General Standard Of Living.

By The Time You Have Perfected Any Style Of Writing, You Have Always Outgrown It.

Reality Exists In The Human Mind, And Nowhere Else.

The Real Test Of Character Is How You Treat Someone Who Has No Possibility Of Doing You Any Good.

The Essential Act Of War Is Destruction, Not Necessarily Of Human Lives, But Of The Products Of Human Labor. War Is A Way Of Shattering To Pieces, Or Pouring Into The Stratosphere, Or Sinking In The Depths Of The Sea, Materials Which Might Otherwise Be Used To Make The Masses Too Comfortable, And Hence, In The Long Run, Too Intelligent.

Even Through The Shut Window Pane, The World Looked Cold.

You Are Imagining That There Is Something Called Human Nature Which Will Be Outraged By What We Do And Will Turn Against Us. But We Create Human Nature. Men Are Infinitely Malleable.

Orthodoxy Is Unconsciousness.

Unconsciousness

Man Is The Only Creature That Consumes Without Producing. He Does Not Give Milk, He Does Not Lay Eggs, He Is Too Weak To Pull The Plough, He Cannot Run Fast Enough To Catch Rabbits. Yet He Is Lord Of All The Animals.

Each Generation Imagines Itself To Be More Intelligent Than The One That Went Before It, And Wiser Than The One That Comes After It.

He Examined The Chess Problem And Set Out The Pieces. It Was A Tricky Ending, Involving A Couple Of Knights. 'white To Play And Mate In Two Moves.' Winston Looked Up At The Portrait Of Big Brother. White Always Mates, He Thought With A Sort Of Cloudy Mysticism. Always, Without Exception, It Is So Arranged. In No Chess Problem Since The Beginning Of The World Has Black Ever Won. Did It Not Symbolize The Eternal, Unvarying Triumph Of Good Over Evil? The Huge Face Gazed Back At Him, Full Of Calm Power. White Always Mates.

Pacifism Is Objectively Pro-fascist

A Sahib Has Got To Act Like A Sahib; He Has Got To Appear Resolute, To Know His Own Mind And Do Definite Things.

The Organizing Principal For Any Culture Is War.

The Belly Comes Before The Soul.

It Was A Bright Cold Day In April, And The Clocks Were Striking Thirteen.

Probably The Best Nonsense Poetry Is Produced Gradually And Accidentally, By Communities Rather Than By Individuals.

Winston Worked In The Records Department (a Single Branch Of The Ministry Of Truth) Editing And Writing For The Times. He Dictated Into A Machine Called A Speakwrite. Winston Would Receive Articles Or News-items Which For One Reason Or Another It Was Thought Necessary To Alter, Or, In Newspeak, Rectify. If, For Example, The Ministry Of Plenty Forecast A Surplus, And In Reality The Result Was Grossly Less, Winston's Job Was To Change Previous Versions So The Old Version Would Agree With The New One.

He Gazed Up At The Enormous Face. Forty Years It Had Taken Him To Learn What Kind Of Smile Was Hidden Beneath The Dark Moustache. O Cruel, Needless Misunderstanding! O Stubborn, Self-willed Exile From The Loving Breast! Two Gin-scented Tears Trickled Down The Sides Of His Nose. But It Was All Right, Everything Was All Right, The Struggle Was Finished. He Had Won The Victory Over Himself. He Loved Big Brother

A Totalitarian State Is In Effect A Theocracy, And Its Ruling Caste, In Order To Keep Its Position, Has To Be Thought Of As Infallible. But Since, In Practice, No One Is Infallible, It Is Frequently Necessary To Rearrange Past Events In Order To Show That This Or That Mistake Was Not Made, Or That This Or That Imaginary Triumph Actually Happened.

Advertising Is The Rattling Of A Stick Inside A Swill Bucket.

Records Told The Same Tale, Then The Lie Passed Into History And Became Truth.

No One Can Look Back On His Schooldays And Say With Truth That They Were Altogether Unhappy.

He Was A Lonely Ghost Uttering A Truth That Nobody Would Ever Hear.

Windmill Or No Windmill, He Said, Life Would Go On As It Had Always Gone On--that Is, Badly.

Never Use A Metaphor, Simile, Or Other Figure Of Speech Which You Are Used To Seeing In Print. Never Use A Long Word Where A Short One Will Do. If It Is Possible To Cut A Word Out Always Cut It Out. Never Use The Passive Voice Where You Can Use The Active. Never Use A Foreign Phrase A Scientific Word Or A Jargon Word If You Can Think Of An Everyday English Equivalent. Break Any Of These Rules Sooner Than Say Anything Outright Barbarous.

The Fact Is That Certain Themes Cannot Be Celebrated In Words, And Tyranny Is One Of Them. No One Ever Wrote A Good Book In Praise Of The Inquisition.

Man's Greatest Drive Is Not Love Or Hate But To Change Another Person's Writing.

...men Can Only Be Highly Civilized While Other Men, Inevitably Less Civilized, Are There To Guard And Feed Them.

We Control Matter Because We Control The Mind. Reality Is Inside The Skull.

The Whole Question Of Evolution Seems Less Momentous Than It Did, Because, Unlike The Victorians, We Do Not Feel That To Be Descended From Animals Is Degrading To Human Dignity.

If He Thinks He Floats Off The Floor, And If I Simultaneously Think I See Him Do It, Then The Thing Happens.

News Is Something Somebody Doesn't Want Printed; All Else Is Advertising.

We May Find In The Long Run That Tinned Food Is A Deadlier Weapon Than The Machine-gun.

If I Had Understood The Situation A Bit Better I Should Probably Have Joined The Anarchists.

Do You Know Why You’re Here? Shall I Tell You Why We Brought You Here? To Cure You.to Make You Sane.

Myths Which Are Believed In Tend To Become True.

As With The Christian Religion, The Worst Advertisement For Socialism Is Its Adherents.

And It Is A Great Thing To Die In Your Own Bed, Though It Is Better Still To Die In Your Boots.

He Was Conscious Of Nothing Except The Blankness Of The Page In Front Of Him, The Itching Of The Skin Above His Ankle, The Blaring Of The Music, And A Slight Booziness Caused By The Gin.

Many People Genuinely Do Not Wish To Be Saints, And It Is Probable That Some Who Achieve Or Aspire To Sainthood Have Never Felt Much Temptation To Be Human Beings. If One Could Follow It To Its Psychological Roots, One Would, I Believe, Find That The Main Motive For "non-attachment" Is A Desire To Escape From The Pain Of Living, And Above All From Love, Which, Sexual Or Non-sexual, Is Hard Work.

Nothing Was Your Own Except The Few Cubic Centimetres Inside Your Skull.

Her Feelings Were Her Own, And Could Not Be Altered From Outside. It Would Not Have Occurred To Her That An Action Which Is Ineffectual Thereby Becomes Meaningless. If You Loved Someone, You Loved Him, And When You Had Nothing Else To Give, You Still Gave Him Love.

He Had Moved From Thought To Words, And Now From Words To Actions.

We Are The Dead. Our Only True Life Is In The Future. We Shall Take Part In It As Handfuls Of Dust And Splinters Of Bone. But How Far Away That Future May Be, There Is No Knowing. It Might Be A Thousand Years. At Present Nothing Is Possible Except To Extend The Area Of Sanity Little By Little. We Cannot Act Collectively. We Can Only Spread Our Knowledge Outwards From Individual To Individual, Generation After Generation. In The Face Of The Thought Police There Is No Other Way.

One Always Abandons Something In Retreat. Look At Napoleon At The Beresina! He Abandoned His Whole Army.

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